get a flu shot
According to the CDC, “The best way to reduce the risk of seasonal flu and its potentially serious complications is to get vaccinated each year.”
Many health professionals, including infectious disease specialist Steven Gordon, MD, at the Cleveland Clinic, and infectious disease clinical pharmacist Kaitlyn Rivard, PharmD, say the best time to get vaccinated is in September or October, when new annual versions of the vaccines typically become available in North America. But don’t worry if you missed that window, because the second best time is “right now.”
Elena Diskin and Lisa Solot, two respiratory specialists at the Virginia Department of Health, and Christy Gray, director of the vaccination division there, all agree that there is still time to get the annual flu vaccine. “The season runs from October to late April,” he wrote in an email, “we typically see the most flu activity in January and February.” So yes, if you haven’t had the flu vaccine yet it’s still worth getting it.
Flu vaccines can’t give you the flu
Although it is possible to feel unwell after getting a flu vaccine, you cannot get the flu from it. In public health information about flu vaccines last updated in 2024, CDC confirms that, “Flu vaccines cannot cause flu illness. Injectable flu vaccines (i.e., flu vaccines) are made from either inactivated (killed) virus, or from only one protein of the influenza virus.” According to the CDC, the nasal spray vaccine, which is for people ages 2 to 49, and which you can give at home, “contains live viruses that have been attenuated (weakened) so that they will not cause disease.”
However, it takes up to two weeks after vaccination to have its full effect. This means that if you were exposed to the flu virus just before or two weeks after getting the vaccine, you could get sick, but it would not be caused by the vaccine.
Flu vaccines are highly effective at preventing serious illness
The flu vaccine changes every year depending on which strain of the virus experts believe will be prevalent, and although it is not foolproof, it is highly effective at preventing serious illness. For example, in the 2024-2025 season, flu vaccines were 56 percent effective, which is higher than in nearly 15 years.
“Vaccine effectiveness is measured by comparing the frequency of health outcomes (for example, symptomatic disease, hospitalization, death) in vaccinated and unvaccinated people in the real world,” say Diskin, Solot and Gray at the Virginia Department of Health. effectiveness is different from efficacyWhich measures outcomes in controlled trials.
“In plain language, [vaccine effectiveness] It describes how much less likely a vaccinated person is to get sick than an unvaccinated person, based on real-world data,” says Sai Paritala, an assistant professor and former epidemiologist at the University of Nebraska Medical Center College of Public Health.
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